Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan: chief minister of the Frontier, 1947–1953

At a glance

• Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan was born on 16 July 1901 at Nagar in Chitral, to a family that had come to Peshawar from Kashmir. He died in 1981. [2]

• A barrister trained in London, he sat for the Congress in the central assembly and wrote Gold and Guns on the Pathan Frontier (1945), dedicated to Dr Khan Sahib. [1, 2]

• He joined the Muslim League on 16 August 1945 and was sworn in as chief minister on 23 August 1947, leading a minority. [2]

• His government banned the Khudai Khidmatgar on 15 September 1948, a month after the shooting at Babra. [2]

• His ministry is credited with the University of Peshawar, the Tenancy Act of 1950 and the Warsak scheme. [2]

• Moved to the central cabinet in April 1953, he was later jailed and disqualified under Ayub Khan and served under Bhutto. [2, 6]

A Kashmiri family in Chitral and Peshawar

Syed Minhaj ul Hassan's 2015 study of his ministry writes that his forefathers had migrated from Kashmir to Peshawar. He was born at Nagar, a village in Chitral, where his father Abdul Hakim Khan served as an Indian Assistant for the British government. [2] The origin followed him into politics. In 1947 two Muslim League members telegraphed Jinnah against his appointment as chief minister, arguing that the Pathans would never accept a Kashmiri as their leader. [2] A paper in the International Journal of Politics and Social Sciences Review says he spent summers at a house near Srinagar and practised at the High Court there. [3]

He is not Nawab Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum, the conservative first minister of the province under the reforms of 1932, whom his own book calls "the late lamented". [1]

His father's postings moved the boy from school to school. He matriculated from the Mission school in Mardan in 1916 and entered Islamia College, Peshawar, where he helped found its students' union and was its first president. [2]

From Khilafat to the Congress benches

The Khilafat movement drew him out of college. Hassan says he organised a students' strike and was expelled, though some say he left in the non-cooperation movement and joined the Jamia Millia at Aligarh. In March 1921 he attended a Khilafat conference at Rawalpindi with Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and in April he became general secretary of the new provincial Khilafat committee. [2]

He went to England in 1922, studied economics and political science at the London School of Economics, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1926. Back in Peshawar he became a prominent lawyer. [2]

He stood as an independent for the Frontier Legislative Council in 1932 and lost, then joined the Congress. In February 1937 he had a Congress ticket for the provincial assembly and lost again. [2, 3] The seat that mattered fell vacant when Dr Khan Sahib left the central assembly to become chief minister, and Qayyum Khan won it unopposed in July 1937. [2] In Delhi he rose to be deputy leader of the Congress party in the assembly, and in February 1938 he moved the resolution, which the house accepted, asking for a federally subsidised university at Peshawar for the settled districts and the tribal areas. [2, 3]

By 1945 his standing in the Frontier Congress had gone. Hassan gives two reasons: his association with Bhulabhai Desai, the Congress leader in the assembly, who had lost the party's favour over talks with Liaquat Ali Khan, and his own loss of taste for revolutionary activity. Hassan says he took no part in Quit India, and the 2025 paper says he did. [2, 3]

The book he later banned

In 1945 he published Gold and Guns on the Pathan Frontier with Hind Kitabs of Bombay. The preface is signed "Abdul Qaiyum" at New Delhi on 31 March 1945, and the title page calls him a member of the central assembly. [1] The book is dedicated "To Doctor Khan Sahib, for his unceasing fight against corruption in public life and in public services". [1] It tells the rise of the Khudai Khidmatgar and holds that the Frontier's problem is "mainly economic". [1]

On the Muslim League it is blunt. It says that under the Congress ministry of 1937 the honorary magistrates "were the first to go", and that the zaildars and muafidars "soon became the 'Champions of Islam'" and, with the cry of "Islam in danger", "the Frontier's first recruits to the Muslim League". [1] It describes the League ministry of 1943 to 1945 as a minority government that came to power "aided by the British Government" and fell to a Congress no-confidence vote by 24 votes to 18 on 12 March 1945. [1] Its last pages say that a Pakistan "subservient to British Imperialism" does not attract Frontier Muslims. [1] Of the Frontier's leaders, "Pride of place must necessarily go to the Khan Brothers". [1]

It also argues for a university: the Pathans, he wrote, wished to turn Islamia College into "a great Pathan University" that would help "the development and growth of the Pushtu language and Pathan culture". [1]

The Express Tribune reports that after taking office he banned the book, and quotes the columnist Zalan Momand's view that he did so to escape the label of turncoat. [4]

The switch to the League, 1945

On 16 August 1945, less than five months after signing that preface, he joined the Muslim League. [2] The sources agree on the date and differ on the reason.

The 2025 paper's account is that the Simla Conference of June 1945 collapsed because Congress would not accept the League as the voice of India's Muslims, and that he concluded Congress could not be trusted to give Muslims their share. [3]

Hassan collects the doubters. Mian Ziauddin, a Frontier League man, believed Qayyum Khan meant to win a Congress seat first and join the League afterwards. Qayyum Khan himself said many times that the Congress had treated him unfairly over the 1946 ticket for the central assembly, and Mian Burhanuddin told Hassan that the ticket went to Abdul Ghani Khan, the son of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. [2] See Ghani Khan. Maulana Fazl-i-Mabood and Fida Muhammad Khan, whom Hassan also interviewed, judged that he saw Pakistan coming. [2]

What the League gained is explained by Hassan, citing Stephen Rittenberg's 1988 book. He brought no large following, but he was the highest Frontier Congressman to change sides, and as a newcomer he belonged to no League faction. [2] He used the advantage at once. As chairman of the Frontier parliamentary board he awarded the tickets for 1946, and Ziauddin recorded that no old Leaguer who might rival him was given one: Sardar Aurangzeb Khan and Ziauddin himself were refused, and Abdul Rab Nishtar got his with difficulty. [2] In Peshawar city Qayyum Khan was returned and Nishtar lost, and Hassan reports the allegation that Qayyum Khan had told his supporters to cast both their votes for him. [2]

The result of that election is in the article on partition and the referendum: Congress won 30 of 50 seats and the League 17. [2] The League's members chose him as their leader in the assembly on 10 March 1946. [3]

The campaign against the Khan ministry

In February 1947 the League began civil disobedience against the Congress ministry. [2] The 2025 paper says that on 28 February Qayyum Khan led a rally at Mardan and offered himself for arrest, and that when Mountbatten reached Peshawar on 29 April he met the League delegation, Qayyum Khan among them, paroled from jail for the meeting. [3]

After the 3 June plan, Hassan says, Jinnah advised the Frontier League to drop the agitation and work for the referendum. The 2025 paper says instead that the provincial League council decided to continue. [2, 3] The referendum, which the Khudai Khidmatgar boycotted, is told in the article on partition.

Hassan says Mian Burhanuddin, a League leader, told him that on Qayyum Khan's advice he called on the governor twice after the referendum to ask for Dr Khan Sahib's dismissal. The acting governor, R. M. M. Lockhart, wrote to Mountbatten on 9 August 1947 against it. [2]

A minority ministry from 23 August 1947

Dr Khan Sahib's ministry was dismissed on 22 August 1947. Hassan argues that, since the British had dropped Section 93, the Governor-General had no clear power to remove a ministry that kept its majority, and that the government's answer was a Section 92A added to the interim constitution. [2] Qayyum Khan told the assembly on 22 March 1948 that the ministers had been dismissed for refusing the oath of allegiance. Dr Khan Sahib and Qazi Ataullah Khan denied it: they had been asked to resign, not to take an oath. [2]

He was sworn in on 23 August 1947 without a majority. Hassan gives the house in November 1947 as Congress 24, Muslim League 16 and non-Muslim members 9. In December Qayyum Khan suggested to Jinnah that the assembly be dissolved after a constitutional amendment, and Jinnah did not agree to dissolve it indefinitely. [2] Hassan's conclusion says he won some Congress members over "through lucre and intimidation" and had some kidnapped. [2]

Critics, among them the League's own Yusuf Khattak, held that fresh elections were the proper course, since the referendum was a vote against the Congress ministry but not for Qayyum Khan. The League answered that it had won the referendum and the new state could not hold an election. [2]

On 3 and 4 September 1947 the Khudai Khidmatgar met at Sardaryab, called the dismissal undemocratic, and decided not to protest. [2] The movement's story is in the article on Bacha Khan.

The Public Safety Ordinance, the ban and Babra

Abdul Ghaffar Khan was arrested on 15 June 1948. [2] On 8 July the governor issued the NWFP Public Safety Ordinance. It let the government arrest anyone without warrant and banned rallies and processions. [2] Qayyum Khan's defence was that those arrested were involved in anti-state activities, and he called the Khudai Khidmatgar agents of the Hindus. [2]

On 12 August 1948 Khudai Khidmatgar marchers were martyred at Babra in Charsadda. Hassan sets the two accounts side by side.

The official account comes from a special branch diary of 17 August. It says Section 144 was imposed on 5 August, and the Red Shirts gathered on an open field anyway, men, women and children among them. The assistant commissioner appealed to them to disperse, was stoned, and someone fired on him. The police were then ordered to open fire as the crowd advanced. The communiqué put the casualties at about 15 killed and 50 wounded, and a second police diary at 20 killed and 25 wounded. [2]

The Khudai Khidmatgar account comes from Abdul Wali Khan, who relays what Salar Amin Jan Khan told him. The deputy commissioner had not imposed Section 144 at all. Police had closed the roads, and as the marchers moved towards the graveyard past the Ghazi Gul Baba mosque, police and militia fired from the rooftops without warning. Women brought out copies of the Quran on their heads to stop the firing. The account estimates more than 600 dead. [2] Khan Shehram Eusufzye, writing in 2018, puts the number martyred at about 600 and says hospitals were told not to admit the wounded. [5] The Calcutta Morning News of 19 August 1948 reported 300 killed and 400 to 500 wounded. [2]

Hassan prints Qayyum Khan's words in the assembly from Abad Khan's memoir: "I had imposed section 144 at Babara. When the people did not disperse, then firing was opened on them. They were lucky that the police had finished ammunition, otherwise not a single soul would have been left alive." [2] Eusufzye gives nearly the same words and dates them to September 1948. [5] Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy of the Jinnah Awami League called the shooting worse than Jallianwala Bagh, while the people of Hazara, Hassan records, approved of the government's action. [2]

A punitive police force of three platoons was posted at Charsadda, with a fine of Rs 50,000 on the Red Shirts of Charsadda and the same on Mardan to pay for it. [2] Under Section 10 of the Ordinance the government forfeited the property, except houses, of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his sons Abdul Wali Khan and Abdul Ghani Khan. On 15 September 1948 the governor declared the Khudai Khidmatgar and the Zalmai Pakhtun unlawful and confiscated Sardaryab. [2] Speaking in Peshawar on Independence Day, Qayyum Khan accused Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Faqir of Ipi of anti-state activity and praised those who had put down the Red Shirts. [2] The article on Abdul Wali Khan follows the family through these years.

The 1951 election and his own party

Qayyum Khan was also president of the provincial League, and Hassan says he held it by pushing out rivals: the Pir of Manki Sharif left to found the Jinnah Awami Muslim League, and Yusuf Khattak and Ibrahim Khan Jhagra were expelled in October 1951. [2]

The first election by adult franchise in the province ran from 26 November to 12 December 1951, for 85 seats. About 660,000 voters took part, and Qayyum Khan met the new house with 67 supporters. [2] Hassan cites Rafique Afzal for the rejection of 31 opposition nominations and the withdrawal of 112 opposition candidates, and sets out the Jinnah Awami Muslim League's complaints of bogus votes. His own conclusion is that the election was heavily rigged. [2]

What his ministry built

Analysts, Hassan's conclusion reports, regard Qayyum Khan as the best administrator the province ever had. [2]

Education came first. The Congress ministry had introduced a university bill in March 1947, and Qayyum Khan, then in opposition, sat on its select committee. As chief minister he saw a new bill through: the assembly passed it on 4 March 1950 and the governor assented on 16 March. [2] The select committee, of which he was a member, made the chief minister the first Chancellor, and Liaquat Ali Khan inaugurated the University of Peshawar on 30 October 1950. [2] An opposition member later complained that Qayyum Khan had given himself the chancellorship for life, and an act of 18 November 1953 took his name out. [2] Hassan adds two women's colleges. [2]

The NWFP Tenancy Act of July 1950 made occupancy tenants who paid no rent to the landlord owners of their land, and let those who paid rent buy it at ten times the rent. Hassan counts 188,940 occupancy tenants when the Act came in, and says about 70 per cent had gained ownership by October 1950. A government order of 22 April 1949 abolished jagirs with some exceptions, and acts of 1952 and 1953 tried again, though Hassan says they were not enforced. [2]

On power, two new generators were switched on at Malakand on 25 April 1951, lifting capacity from 9,600 to 19,600 kilowatts. The Warsak scheme on the Kabul River was, in Hassan's words, the most important launched by the ministry. Investigations began in February 1949, and the Pakistan Economic Council approved it on 6 September 1952. [2]

Against that, Hassan says he tried to restrain the press and the courts, supported the Kashmir fighting of 1947 and 1948 by encouraging and supplying tribesmen, and, in his conclusion, used the Kashmir issue for his own standing. [2]

Removal in 1953 and the years after

By late 1952 the Punjab and the central government were against him, Hassan says, over the price of electricity sold to the Punjab, his moves on the Frontier states and tribal areas, and his friendship with Bengali politicians. [2] In April 1953, after Khwaja Nazimuddin was dismissed as prime minister, he became federal minister for food and industries in Muhammad Ali Bogra's cabinet. Sardar Inayat-ur-Rahman Khan Abbasi told Hassan he was given the choice of the cabinet or resignation and jail, while Qayyum Khan said the new prime minister asked him by telephone to join. [2] With the dissolution of the assembly in October 1954 he lost the post, and in 1955 he left the League. He rejoined in 1957 and became its president in 1958. [2]

Dawn says he defied a ban on army-style uniforms for party workers in September 1958, shortly before martial law. [8] Hassan says he was arrested on 26 September 1960 on old corruption charges, tried by a military court in Lahore and sentenced to three years. In May 1961 he was barred from politics until 31 December 1966 under the Elective Bodies Disqualification Order. He was arrested again in July 1962 and, Hassan says, apologised to Ayub Khan and promised to stay out of politics. [2]

Dawn's history of the League factions says the Qayyum Muslim League, formed before the 1970 election, won 9 of 300 seats. [7] A Dawn column of 2012 adds that he had been Bhutto's arch rival in 1970, that Bhutto then made him federal minister for home and frontier affairs, and that he had a record of hostility to Abdul Wali Khan's family. [6] Abdul Karim Khan's foreword gives his years as 1901 to 1981. [2]

How the writers judge him

Hassan's closing verdict has two halves. Qayyum Khan was "an extremely ambitious and greedy ruler", intolerant of rivals. He was also, in the analysts' view, the best administrator the Frontier had known. [2] Abdul Karim Khan's foreword says his opponents called him the "butcher of Babarah" while thousands of followers praised his part in the Pakistan movement. [2]

His book is read in different ways. Hassan sees a politician "desperately" trying to regain his position in national politics. [2] The analyst Khadim Hussain, quoted by the Express Tribune, sees the later ban on it as an attempt to weaken the Khudai Khidmatgar's ideas, and the paper summarises Rajmohan Gandhi's view that the move to the League was political realism. [4]